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National Cybersecurity Month 2018 has been, appropriately, an active time in cybersecurity law and regulation. Our state of California has passed a first-of-its-kind law to begin to regulate Internet of Things (IoT) devices – smart thermostats, implantable medical devices, etc. Watch this space for much more on this important development. California is often the first state out of the blocks with landmark innovations in cybersecurity and privacy regulation.

Often, but not always.

On November 2nd 2018, a groundbreaking new cybersecurity law will go into effect in Ohio of all places. Ohio’s new approach hopefully will serve as a bellwether for cybersecurity law and data breach liability legislation across the country.

Ohio Senate Bill 220, grants “safe harbor” to companies taking reasonable measures to implement a standards-based cybersecurity program. Not to be confused with the US-EU data transfer agreement of the same name that was struck down by Europe’s highest court, the Ohio “safe harbor” law provides significant protection from legal liability for companies that implement a reasonable written cybersecurity plan.

UCI’s Cybersecurity Policy & Research Institute (CPRI) recently partnered with the Atlantic Council and the Marine Corps University Foundation (MCUF) to provide a half-day cyber simulation event, approximating adership decision-making during a crisis with cyber actions. Event participants were notified of cyber activity related to an “escalating crisis” with a rival nation. They had to choose between a number of options to de-escalate the crisis, conduct a proportionate response or escalate the situation. They then had to recommend a coordinated response, ranging from “publicly call for third-party mediation” to “use exploit chains to erode rival military navigation.”

“Having participated in a number of actual national security crisis meetings,” said CPRI Executive Director Bryan Cunningham, welcoming everyone to the event, “I can tell you that the [scenario] is pretty accurate.” The former White House lawyer and adviser warned the participants prior to the exercise, “You will find that you have not anywhere near enough information and not anywhere near enough time, and that is how reality works in many crisis situations.”

While data theft and cyber risk are major threats facing organizations, existing research suggests that most organizations do not have sufficient protection to prevent data breaches, deal with notification responsibilities, and comply with privacy laws. This article explores how insurance companies play a critical, yet unrecognized, role in assisting organizations in complying with privacy laws and dealing with cyber theft.

Political scientists, economists, and legal scholars have been debating corporate social responsibility for decades. To that end, the financial crisis, fraud relating to Enron and Worldcom, Occupy Wall Street, and even the 2016 presidential primary debates all raise attention and concern about what corporate social responsibility is and should be in the United States.

After entering a password, your regular computer keyboard might appear to look the same as always, but a new approach harvesting thermal energy can illuminate the recently pressed keys, revealing that keyboard-based password entry is even less secure than previously thought. Computer Science Ph.D. students Tyler Kaczmarek and Ercan Ozturk in the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences (ICS), working with Chancellor’s Professor of Computer Science Gene Tsudik, have exploited thermal residue from human fingertips to introduce a new insider attack — the Thermanator.

Chancellor’s Professor of Computer Science Gene Tsudik and two of his Ph.D. students, Tyler Kaczmarek and Ercan Ozturk, have developed a novel technique aimed at mitigating “Lunchtime Attacks.” Such attacks occur when an insider adversary takes over an authenticated state of a careless user who has left his or her computer unattended. Tsudik, Kaczmarek and Ozturk have come up with an unobtrusive and continuous biometic-based “de-authentication,” i.e., a means of quickly terminating the secure session of a previously authenticated user after detecting that user’s absence. They introduce the new biometric, called Assentication, in a paper appearing at the 2018 International Conference on Applied Cryptography and Network Security (ACNS).

In a paper to appear at the 2018 European Symposium on Research in Computer Security (ESORICS), a team of researchers from UC Irvine, New York Institute of Technology and University of Padova (Italy) reveal a new attack: Secret Information Leakage from Keystroke Timing Videos (SILK-TV). The UCI researchers include Chancellor’s Professor of Computer Science Gene Tsudik and undergrad exchange students Martin Georgiev and Nikita Samarian.

Donald Trump is increasingly relying on his personal cell phone to contact outside advisers, multiple sources inside and outside the White House told CNN, as Trump returns to the free-wheeling mode of operation that characterized the earliest days of his administration.